


a glass half full

by parallel_outlines



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, KCWeek18, klaroline appreciation week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-29 06:24:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15723789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallel_outlines/pseuds/parallel_outlines
Summary: Caroline draws on a long-neglected talent. (5x13 canon divergent for KC Appreciation Week 2018)





	a glass half full

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed. All mistakes are mine.

At some point that afternoon she’d taken the lead and he’d let her. Maybe this was what he’d really wanted all along, to follow Caroline Forbes here and there, seeing familiar places as if for the first time through her eyes. She’d wandered for a while until they arrived, to his surprise, at St James Infirmary.

At his questioning gaze she pauses in the doorway. “Like I said, we need a drink.”

And drink they do. Caroline seems to immediately establish rapport with the bartender so Klaus’ glass is never empty. They talk about the city, she teases him over his ease amongst tourists,  asks a hundred questions about his time here.

It's only just getting dark when Caroline switches to water, which he takes as his cue to stand “If you’ve had enough I there may be one more thing I can show you”

But she shakes her head, “You’ve shown me food, music, culture. Now I want to see that original hybrid tolerance.”

She's smiling, her voice playful; but the words ring false. It could be the drink or the hollow or simply force of habit, a thousand years paranoia coming home to roost. But he’s never learned how to think impartially where Caroline Forbes is concerned, never wanted to; not even as she charmed him off the edge of a precipice.

“I thought you’d want me to go back, say my goodbyes”

Caroline glances down to her glass “If you’re serious about... your plan, that is probably the right thing to do. But it’s not what I want.”

The room is quiet for a moment. Caroline turns round to watch as the pianist takes a drink and picks up again. When she turns back the moment is lost. “You know, I’ve been here before.” There’s something of significance in her tone, something obscured he can’t quite put his finger on.  All day she’s been sneaking glances at him, watching him watch New Orleans. If he didn't have an ancient malevolent spirit for a passenger in his head, if he wasn't counting down the hours left to him he’s sure he could figure out what it means.

“I bet you can’t finish the bottle” she dares him, and he’s startled to realize the bartender has come and gone and Caroline poured them both another glass. He’d almost entirely slipped away from himself and it occurs to him for the first time he may have waited too long. Easier to die on an impulse than to consider it from all angles and approach deliberately.

Caroline pushes his glass towards him. He takes it and lifts it to his lips to drink, holding her gaze all the while.

* * *

 

They reach the city limit before Caroline lets her grip on the steering wheel relax. Klaus is passed out in the back seat.  She’d patted him down for the stake and left his phone curbside before loading him into the car, buckling him in for good measure and driving off as fast as she dared.  Can’t be too careful.

He’d murmured to himself for a while, every sound and movement drawing her knuckles white, but eventually he’d drifted off.  She hopes it’ll hold. If he wakes up lucid and determined to turn back she’s not completely confident she can keep them on the road without bloodshed. And while her mind is made up bloodshed or no, she'd rather avoid it.

The quiet hours on the road back to Mystic Falls were supposed to give her time to think clearly, plan the next step, but her mind won’t stop racing. This isn't one of her better plans. She’s at a disadvantage in experience, in resources, and in brute strength. And while every mile she puts between Klaus and the white oak stake makes another solution more practical, the stake is still out there and she can’t put any of her alternate solutions into action alone.

She hears movement behind her and tenses, glancing in the rear-view mirror.  He’s still lying across the back seat; not coiled for attack no tension or angers in his posture. He stirs again and she turns to look properly only to find him looking back.

“We’re not in New Orleans, are we?” his voice is rough, half awake but she still starts at the question.

“No,” she answers, waiting. She slows down a little, if she has to snap his neck she’d rather not get into a wreck in the process.

“You tricked me,” a rueful note in his tone.

“I _distracted_ you. You can thank me later” she’s surprised to find the confidence in her voice is one hundred percent genuine.

Klaus makes a muffled noise. If he hadn’t drunk twice his weight in bourbon in the last four hours that noise she’s sure it would have been a chuckle. It warms her.

“Klaus?”

No reply. She glances back again and is relieved to see he’s out of it once more. She has some planning to do.

She still needs to get back to Mystic falls without interference from irate original hybrid, his family or the malevolent dark magic hitching a ride in his body. She has to get that pesky dark magic out of him and into someone or some _thing_ else. She’ll probably have to cave on new cell phones for the girls as a thank you and she’ll be lucky if Ric isn’t giving her the evil eye into the next decade.

All of this is still true. The facts have not changed.

Caroline presses down on the gas, the beginning of a smile on her lips.


End file.
